The Hindu Business Line : Accountability defined

If you had taken the LEAP with Steve Farber, here is The Radical Edge (www.oxfordbookstore.com). The acronym, as he had explained in an earlier book, stands for: `Cultivate love, generate energy, inspire audacity, and provide proof.'

To be fully human you must accept `a radical level of personal accountability for making the future markedly better than the present, says Farber in the Edge. Alas, "Accountability has become an uncomfortable idea," he rues. "It's that thing that people desperately want other people to take."

Accountability is `not simply about being more effective and productive at work,' explains the book. "It's not just about achieving goals and accomplishing tasks, and it's not about proving to anyone how wonderful a person you are."

What then is accountability? "It's about living, breathing, toiling, and playing way-the-hell out there on the Radical Edge where you simultaneously stoke your business to phenomenal success, amp your life to the loudest possible volume of joy and meaning, and change the world for all of us. Hit all three things at the same time and you've got The Radical Edge as a businessperson and as a human being."

Persuasive.

Response-ability versus blame

Become fully response-able, exhorts Brian Mayne in Goal Mapping, from Viva (www.vivagroupindia.com). Response-ability, or the power to choose, comes before responsibility, he argues.

"The opposite of response-ability is blame," explains Mayne.

"The real trouble with blame is that it's always `out there' — outside of yourself and always somebody else's fault — which means you have little influence over it. This results in you feeling as if someone is doing something to you, or making you feel a certain way, and that you are powerless to do anything about it. Blame turns you in to a victim."

Becoming response-able is the fifth among seven principles that the author outlines for personal empowerment. First is to raise your awareness. Well-formulated.

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